An Account of the Lives of the Weyard Sisters
by Izzy
Summary: Text of An Account of the Lives of the Weyard Sisters, and Fian Ollivander's Three Most Remarkable Descendants, by Hermione Granger, her third published work.
1. Author's Note and Acknowledgements

**About the Author**

Hermione Granger, along with her future husband Ronald Weasley, was one of the two main lieutenants of Harry Potter during the Second War of Voldemort, and the only one to accompany him during his entire time as a fugitive. She is also known for her special research into the nature of time, and her discovery of the time-wind and mapping of its nature. She is also author of _An Honest and Accurate Account of the Life of Albus Dumbledore_, and a translation of _The Tales of Beadle the Bard_. She currently divides her time between the Department of Mysteries and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in the Ministry of Magic, and lives in London with Weasley and their two children, Rose and Hugo.

**Author's Note and Acknowledgements**

While my family and friends have often told me that I spend so much time with books that I ought to make my living with them completely, I must warn my readers upfront that up until I decided to write a biography on Albus Dumbledore I had never thought of writing at all. I had always been more interested in the finding of knowledge rather than the recording of it, and the two of them are very different things.

My decision to write the biography, meanwhile, was more a choice of necessity than anything else. When I was finishing my schooling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry alongside my old friend Harry Potter, we read Rita Skeeter's infamous biography of Dumbledore and were thoroughly appalled. However, when Harry read more favourable accounts of Dumbledore's life, he was not pleased by them either. He was one of the few people left alive that had a real knowledge of the headmaster and the choices, good and bad both, that had defined him, and felt that there ought to be an account out there that told things like they had been, neither romanticizing nor slandering a very complicated wizard.

He asked me to write the book because of all the people he trusted, he thought I would do the best job, and there he was likely right. I began it in my spare time, worked on it mostly over the summer after finishing school, finished and published it, saw that it was getting favourable reviews and selling well with more satisfaction than pride, and went off to pursue my intended career in the Department of Mysteries.

The idea of writing another book did not occur to me until six years later, when I was on maternity leave due to the unpredictable effects of my typical activities at work on pregnancy, but in no state to simply lie around my house all day doing nothing. I happened to pay a visit one day to Mr. Garrick Ollivander, and in the course of our conversation he began to tell me a little bit about his own wide and varied family history, explaining how they turned out more than just a line of wandmakers. Halfway through he declared that I could write my next book on it, a remark I thought little of at the time.

However, as the following months stretched on and left me with too little to do, I found myself thinking more and more about writing that second book, and my mind kept returning to Mr. Ollivander's accounts, or, more specifically, to one particular section of them; the story of _Frere_ Tuck Ollivander of the 12th century A.D., his grandniece Marion of Sherwood, and her daughter Gwynyth, as well as to the Weyard sisters, one of whom was Tuck Ollivander's mother, and were connected to the family together.

With the exception of Gwynyth of Sherwood all of these figures have made their way into Muggle culture, so despite being Muggle-born I grew up hearing about them, albeit in strongly altered forms. The Weyard sisters especially were dealt with very harshly, turned into one-dimensional villains. I observed their presence in wizarding folklore also, and all the various contradicting accounts, and eventually determined that, as with Albus Dumbledore, there needed to be an accurate account of all their lives. I have decided to write it to the best of my ability, and I hope I've managed.

As with my biography of Dumbledore, I owe my ability to write this book to the openness and honesty of several people, most notably _Frere_ Tuck Ollivander himself, whom in ghost form is known commonly as the Fat Friar, and currently resides at Hogwarts as the guardian of Hufflepuff House. I also must gives thanks to most of the other older ghosts of Hogwarts who were witness to the lives of my subjects, especially the Grey Lady and Bloody Baron, both of whom have requested their real names not be given. The Baron especially was able to provide me with information about Marion of Sherwood's difficult relationship with her family. Outside of Hogwarts I must thank the Cursed Prioress, real name Sister Sarah Ollivander, for information that it was hard for her to reveal.

Another source of information at Hogwarts were the Headmaster portraits, especially the portraits of those who ran the school during the era: Professors Luke Charnery, Heinricus de Silvan, Cerys Begond, Lucius Davus, Davidus Dobbs, Magis de Numé, Jason Overdramblus, and Lady Caroline de Lanhaut, the last especially due to her direct involvement in the lives of both Marion and Gwynyth of Sherwood. I feel that I ought to thank them as I would thank their real-life counterparts. On that note I must thank the current Headmistress, Professor Minerva McGonagall, for allowing me to spend many hours in her office talking to and often harassing the portraits. I am likewise indebted to Mary Cattermole, keeper of the Ministry Portraits, for allowing me to interrogate the portraits of the heads of the old Wizarding Council. They were much less helpful, but I must thank the portraits of Horatius Beckett, and especially Pallas de Malfoy and Burdock Muldoon, both of whom were eager to relate their role in events to me.

Others who helped me and gave me free run of their books and manuscripts include Elfrida Bagnold, Mirielle Hammel, Irma Pince, and Jerome Beauvais, as well as the other staff of the libraries at Hogwarts School, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, and the British and French Ministries of Magic, and I must also thank Memnon Zabini, who graciously permitted me to study his collection of writings by Dian Weyard. I must thank Victoria Solen for procuring Lady Morgause's former book-Horcrux for my study, and Professor Horace Slughorn and my sister-in-law Ginevra Potter for helping me get information out of it. I am especially impressed by the willingness of the latter to help me after her youthful trauma at the hands of a still-active book-Horcrux of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

As well as Garrick Ollivander, for giving me the idea in the first place and supplying more information, I must thank Melisande Binard and her children for further wandlore and information about the Ollivanders gathered by her family, and for owling other wandmakers worldwide on my behalf. Those who responded include Thomas Aldera, Ochieng Samura, Yin Hong, Hevel Tollessarni, and Eirene Helarchin. I was left very impressed by the network maintained by these tradesmen over multiple generations and the records they kept of each other and their particular subculture. Thanks to Madame Binard I was not only given more factual information, but a context for it I would not have had otherwise.

I must also thank not only Ginny but Harry Potter for encouraging me, Percy Weasley for explaining to me how to accomplish things with Ministry officials, Neville Longbottom for letting me sleep in his greenhouse cot whenever I was at Hogwarts and helping improve both my health and that of my then-unborn children, Yannick and Apolline Delacour for putting me up in France, their older daughter Fleur for talking them into it, and their younger daughter Gabrielle for being my guide there. I also need to thank Arthur Weasley for giving me very constant encouragement and reminders, and Luna Lovegood for bringing in some much needed emotional support at the time I least expected it. Last, but not least, I have to thank my husband Ron Weasley for loving me enough to endure everything up to and including the bringing of a former Horcrux into our house, and my two children Rose and Hugo for the same reason, and also for giving me first the excuse to begin this book, and three years later the excuse to finish it.


	2. The Birth and Early Life of the Weyards

According to popular legend, the four Weyard sisters would have been born as just one Weyard baby, if it had not been for an accident approximately four months into their mother's pregnancy. As the story goes, Sinead Weyard was working in her garden, and, liking the look of one particular bush, attempted to split it into four, but she accidentally flipped her wand around and instead aimed the spell at her womb, causing her unborn baby to split into four instead. Whether, in fact, this is even possible, or if the spell probably would have induced a miscarriage, has been debated by experts. Either way, there is no way this story can ever absolutely be proved. The one piece of concrete evidence towards it happening is an indication, towards the end of their lives, that the Weyard sisters quite literally drew strength from each other, and were physically weakened by each other's deaths, and this might have come from any number of causes.

What is known for sure is that identical quadruplets Nian, Cian, Fian, and Dian Weyard were born, in that order, to Arthur and Sinead Weyard, sometime before the early evening of February 2, 1024, when their names were noticed as having been added to the records of young witches and wizards that has been kept at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry since the early 1000s. The ink was observed to be dry, suggesting that it had at least been some hours since the birth of the four of them, who according to Nian Weyard all came in very quick succession.

Like the majority of British witches and wizards in the early 11th century, Arthur and Sinead Weyard lived in an isolated spot in a cranny of Britain overlooked completely by Muggles, separated not only from them, but from most other wizards. Both the general and wizarding populations were much lower then than they are now, and there were less places in Muggle society where they could easily blend in. While the richest of wizards had the option of mingling with Muggle nobles, and some individual wizards and witches also chose to spend their lives involved in the Muggle Church, which will be discussed later in this book, for the Weyards, a poor family, to live among Muggles would have meant living as serfs, or slaves to the Muggle owners of the land they lived on. For obvious reasons this did not suit them, and the only ones who lived in such a way were those that truly had no other options.

Most wizards did not group with each other either, for reasons of safety. For most of history Muggles have been afraid of magic, but during the Middle Ages this fear was at its height. Most Muggles lived short lives in extreme poverty, at the whim of the owners of the land they worked, circumstances that made it easy for them to blame any problems they had on anything they didn't understand, such as magic. The Muggle Church encouraged their fear, as it made them easier to control. In theory, the use of magic could protect witches and wizards from Muggles, and the standard Muggle punishment for witchcraft, being burnt at the stake, could be easily thwarted with a simple Flame-Freezing Charm. But it was far from unknown for witches and wizards to be overwhelmed from sheer numbers, and/or to be deprived of their wands, without which they suffered an agonizing death. Thus out of very real fears of being identified and persecuted, wizards preferred not to form groups which might make them suspicious.

The exceptions were the wizarding community in London, the inhabitants of Hogsmeade, just outside of Hogwarts, and Magic's Hollow, now known as Godric's Hollow. The latter two were mostly inhabited by the children of Muggle serfs, Hogsmeade especially, as they were unable to return to their parents and typically stayed at Hogwarts even when the school was not in session. Some other wizards chose also to settle there, but usually they, too, had money.

Arthur was English by birth and Sinead Scottish, but like most lower-class couples at the time, they had met at Hogwarts and married upon leaving school. Somewhat more unusual, but hardly unique, was their decision not to return to either of their parents' homes, which were set to be passed down to older brothers, but to instead strike out on their own, and find a place where they could raise their own children safe from Muggles. Their chosen location was on England's west coast, on a rocky area surrounded on all sides by cliffs; it was impossible to get in and out of by non-magical means. Unfortunately, it was not a spot easily habitable even with magical aid. The Weyards ended up bartering most of what little they had in return for aid in breaking up the rock into soil and rendering that soil fertile enough to be used as a garden.

They learned to subsist on what they could grow, and what fish they could retrieve up from the rough waters hundreds of meters below their small home. Their strategy was to use charms to lure sea animals towards the shore, than to Summon them into their nets. With the waters so rough, luring a catch into their range could take hours each day. As with most witches and wizards of the Middle Ages, and most people all together of the Middle Ages, almost all of their time was spent working for their survival. By the time they were five, all four girls were put to work by their parents, either in the garden or on the shore. In was here, in these practical settings, that not only did they begin to show normal initial signs of magic, but the first signs of their rare Divinatory gifts.

None of the girls realized at first that what they could do was at all unusual, since noone had told them it was; they thought little of it when they so often knew beforehand that there was a fish about to come in range, or a gnome was about to invade the garden. Nor did their parents, likely too grateful to ask any questions, seem to notice their daughters' unusually good luck for possibly half a year. But in time, they could not fail to feel that something odd was going on. All four girls would later recall waking up in the middle of the night to overhear their parents talking in whispers while continually glancing at them. For all their late night conversations, however, Arthur and Sinead seemed unable to come up with an explanation until the girls were nearly six.

What finally made it clear, according to both Nian and Dian, was an incident one evening in late December. All five members of the family were gathered closely around the cooking fire, and Sinead was chopping up the day's catch, when Cian said, "Careful, mother, you're going to cut yourself."

Sinead looked up in surprise, and cut herself due to the distraction, at which point Cian said, "Oh, sorry, I shouldn't have said that. That's why you cut yourself, because I did. But I didn't know that."

Realizing that Cian might have Seen her cut herself, Sinead began asking her daughter questions, and soon she and Arthur were convinced that all four possessed the Sight. This left them with the question of what they were going to do about it. They knew that something ought to be done when their children were so uncommonly gifted, but they had little notion of how to handle anything that was not likely to occur within the normal 11th century wizarding homestead. Since their daughters had no control over their gifts at the time, Arthur and Sinead were convinced they were unlikely to be able to make constant precise predictions for anyone outside their family they knew, and the more powerful figures whom they fancied might be willing to try their daughters' abilities were only the vaguest shadows in the world they lived in.

Once a year, in midsummer, Arthur and Sinead had, before their daughters' birth, left their tiny hut and journeyed to London to meet with people, trade what they could, and gain news of the outside world. For the first five years of the quadruplets' lives, they were uncertain about traveling such a distance with them at such a young age. But in the summer of 1030, the family embarked together, the first time any of the girls had gone beyond the cliffs.

It was not an easy journey. Though they traveled most of the way by a primitive version of the Floo Network, to get to the nearest connected fireplace was a week with the six of them scrunched up on a broomstick that was barely charmed for flight, and not at all for comfort, with an unvarnished handle originally built for four riders at most. After the first day, Nian admits in her writing that all four girls were constantly whining and fidgeting, and that their parents' tempers were flaring at them. Even so, all four experienced thrills at seeing new sights, especially so as it brought with it an increase in the scope of their visions, as is often the case for young Seers who gain more knowledge of the world. For two weeks beginning with the first night, all four had vivid dreams of the landscapes they passed through and of who would be present on them at points in the future. Testing their accuracy was impossible, but they made the Weyards aware of the further reaches of the girls' power.

When they arrived in London, Arthur Weyard met with a friend who, on hearing of the quadruplets, urged him to present them to the Wizarding Council, which preceded the modern-day Ministry of Magic. Arthur, who would later be described by his daughters as a shy and cautious man, hesitated. But when word of the Weyard sisters passed around London, Gauis-Claudius Ollivander, head of the Ollivander wandmaking business and friend to most of the high-ranking figures in 11th century Wizarding Britain, took a particular interest in them. He was at the time looking for a possible wife for his second son, Gecundus Ollivander, since the Ollivanders, like all aristocratic wizarding families of the time, arranged marriages for their children prior to their attendance at Hogwarts. He had not found anybody suitable for the ten year old Gecundus, and the idea of marrying a Seer into the family had appeal to him.

Arthur and Sinead Weyard, on hearing Gaius-Claudius Ollivander's offer of a betrothal, were excited, but somewhat wary. On one hand, it could mean a rise in rank and vast improvement of life for the entire family, and the offer itself made clear how much their daughters' gifts could change everything. On the other, Arthur thought he perceived a lack of respect in the way Gaius-Claudius spoke to him, and seemed to think the betrothal a foregone conclusion. Ultimately he gave Gauius-Claudius an encouraging response, but much to the other man's disappointment made no promises.

Gaius-Claudius also spoke to the members of the Council, and on June 30, 1030, the Weyard family was summoned to a meeting. They presented themselves before about half the Council members "in ragged clothes, the girls' long pale hair unkempt" according to the official account of the day's proceedings. Council member Helenus Odoner, who was an expert on Divination, questioned each girl in turn, starting with Nian. She very articulately described first her early experiences of reacting to something that had not yet happened, then the dreams she had been having, but admitted to Odoner that there was no proof of anything. This admission angered Dian, who boldly informed Odoner that they were Seers, and they did not need to prove themselves to anyone. When he replied that they in fact ought to be able to prove it to him Cian got angry, and told him they were going to have their visions with or without his permission, and added, "I hope when that cauldron lands on your foot all your bones break!"

After this exchange, neither girl would answer any questions. Fian attempted to cooperate, but was deeply distressed emotionally, and after a very short time Odoner gave up, and the family was dismissed. However, that night, a cauldron did indeed fall off Odoner's shelf and onto his foot. He immediately notified the other members of the Council and suggested the Weyards be summoned again.

The second meeting took place on July 3, and this time the entire Council was present. The girls were all more talkative, especially because their dreams had now featured the Council members. Some of them were confirmed as accurate; more would be later, which made the possibility of fraud look less likely. By the end of their interviews Helenus Odoner were more than satisfied that they were genuine. Again the Weyards were dismissed, this time with the instruction to return the next morning.

Once the family was gone, the Council debated for two hours what course of action to take. Though none expressed serious doubts about whether the Weyard sisters truly were Seers, many wondered why they should do anything about it. Others pointed out both the rarity of the quadruplets' gift combined with and the poverty in which they lived meant something should be done for them. It was eventually decided that the members of the Council would offer to take the girls and place them where they could be raised in more ideal circumstances, and properly educated and trained in their ability.

Knowing this would give their daughters a better life, their parents agreed the next morning. Gauis-Claudius offered to take the girls in under the condition that the betrothal be made, and again Arthur and Sinead consented. It was promised that Gecundus would marry one of the girls, and implied, though not absolutely stated, that he would marry Nian, the eldest.

During their first days after their parents' departure, the girls were deeply distressed. Gauis-Claudius would later complain, "The girl Fian will not stop crying, Cian begs to see her parents again, and Dian is disobedient and refuses my admonishments, saying she will not listen to a man who makes her sisters so miserable." Nian was calmer, and tried to persuade her sisters to behave better, but she too was angry with the him, as she would later express in her writings: "He tooke us from our home, our parents, and alle thatte we knew, and thought us ungratefulle because we did not feele joy. At our young age it was not easy to understand, much less remember, thatte our life would be better for it. He did expect from us what our minds coulde not do."

A widower, Gaius-Claudius had five children of his own: two sons, Gauis-Marcus, 12, and Gecundus, 10, and daughters Giuletta, 14, Gaineda, 8, and Grianne, 4. The Weyards would not meet Giuletta or Gauius-Marcus until the autumn, as they were at Hogwarts. The school's calendar at the time followed the agricultural season, as many of the students, Muggle and wizard-born alike, were needed at home during both the autumn and the spring, when the crops were planted and harvested, respectively. They befriended Gaineda and Grianne, however, playing with the two girls and eagerly looking to the older for help on learning how to read, help which she seems to have given.

With he whom one of them was expected to marry, however, there was relatively little interaction. Despite this future he did not seem to think the girls were worth paying any attention to now, and once he had made his indifference to them clear they were left feeling as if they did not have the right to his attention yet.

However, Nian wrote about their first conversation, "I knew then I would never marry him." She did not elaborate about this sentence either there or anywhere else, leaving it difficult to tell if this was an actual premonition on her part, or a decision made in anger. It may have even been both. The tendency of Seers to sometimes warp premonitions to fit their own desires and/or expectations is well documented, and the Weyard sisters at this young age had no clear distinction between their divinations and the other thoughts of their brains, thinking it natural that the former should direct the latter without their even consciously thinking about it. It is even possible Nian herself was not sure where her belief came from.

True discord, at least, did not happen, until that autumn, when Giuletta and Gaius-Marcus came home from Hogwarts. Gaius-Marcus viewed the girls much the same way Gecundus did, and he paid even less attention to them, especially as he was already betrothed. But Giuletta was made jealous by the affections given to the Weyards by her younger sisters. Apparently she had previously enjoyed their undivided attention and admiration, and hers had been the only influence on them. She frequently complained to her parents that the girls were trying to steal her younger sisters from her, and to the girls themselves she was outright cruel at times.

Twice she talked Gaineda and Grianne into hiding from the Weyards, then told them that her sisters in fact hated them, and didn't want to see them any more. The first time she was believed. Fian cried for an hour, which made Cian angrily go and confront Gaineda and Grianne. On learning that Giuletta had lied to them, Cian went to her father, who punished his daughter for lying, and when Giuletta tried the same trick again, she was not believed. Nonetheless she continued to try to make the Weyards unwelcome any way she could.

In winter the two older children returned to Hogwarts and there was once again peace in the household. But in spring they returned home again, and ill feeling returned. Shortly after their return, Dian grew so angry with Giuletta that she yelled at her, "You're going to die next week!" Giuletta, who had no doubt already seen enough to be aware that the girls were certainly able to see the future, seemingly believed her. All through the next week, she continually cornered Dian and demanded to know how she would die. Dian, gloating, refused to say any more, telling Giuletta that she should have been nicer, because now she didn't get to find out more. Too frightened to tell anyone, Giuletta spent all of the following week in considerable distress. But when the week had passed and she was still alive, she told her father the story. On being asked about it, Dian admitted she had made the prediction up.

This made him angry enough that he whipped Dian, and seriously considered throwing the girls out. When he threatened this, Nian begged him to at least wait until midsummer when their parents would return. He eventually agreed to keep the girls if they behaved well until then.

Nian described the rest of the spring as "fulle of naught but feare and pain. Emboldenede by the consequences of Dian's folly, Giuletta thought of new and more clever ways to hurt us and try to gette us in trouble. Her father was no foole, and usually investigated and discoverede the truth for himself. But often we wished he hadde not, for there were days when even being thrown outte seemed the better fate to living at the mercy of our younge tyrant."

To further distress the sisters, when they attempted to use their powers to determine whether they would remain with the Ollivanders after midsummer, they were unable to gain any visions or knowledge on the matter. This is a another commonly noted phenomenon among Seers, who, wanting to know something too much, are unable to know it. But it was the first time the girls' powers had failed them in any manner. Cian blamed it on Giuletta, and made her opinion on the matter clear to everyone, which obviously did not help the general mood of the household.

It was this that made Gaius-Claudius Ollivander aware that none of them knew much about how the girls' powers worked, and that they ought to learn more. As a wandmaker he was able to contact other wandmakers from all over Europe, as well as parts of Northern Africa and Western Asia. From the time exploration, trade, and warfare have brought populations into awareness of each other, wandmakers have sought each other out, and for over three millennia they have kept up an informal network of communication, exchanging tips for wandmaking, information about materials, and pieces of wandmarking lore. Wandmakers are often curious people, and most had no other source of information from which to find out anything they wanted to know, so it was very far from unknown for them to exchange information on other subjects as well.

So when Gaius-Claudius chose to seek information through this route, he received a variety of responses, some accurate and helpful, some less so. One thing he was told by all his more knowledgeable sources was that being anxious about some future event made it harder to predict, answering the immediate concern. He was given factual information about Seer development, and pure fiction about how talents could be accentuated by the use of amethysts, and kava root, and similar items, and he and his young wards accept both the true and untrue with equal credibility. Nian and Dian relate experiments with inhaling fumes, brewing potions, and sitting in a room with the letters from Gaius-Claudius' correspondence in hopes of inducing premonitions relating to their authors.

Of more use was the advice to continue to actively broaden the world of the girls. Whenever Gaius-Claudius had company, he would bring the sisters in and present them to his guests. The reactions were mixed at first. Not all those whom their guardian brought to them appreciated being told what would be happening to them, or even what they themselves would be doing, sometimes within years, sometimes within hours. The wizard David Cassorass, newly appointed to the council when he first paid a visit to the Ollivander household, wrote of the girls:

_They did seeme to me lyke slyphs, not in their aura, though their skin was pale and their hair blonde, but in how they did echo each other in appearance, and how they troublede the mindd for some time after. The girl Cian did proclaim to me that my son had broken two of my household chairs and that I woulde thrash him twice within three minutes of my stepping past my threshold. And she did speak naught but truth, for when I did enter into my dwelling, I found my best two chairs broken in front of me, and my youngest son standing by them with his face unable to conceal his guilt, and I was disturbed as much as angry when I twice thrashed him in about the time she saide. At night I had the moste disturbing of dreams, that I ran my way through a great cave of fire and water, and knew at the end I would be drowned, or placed on a stake and burned, but I could not stop, and in my ear, there did chante the voices of the four girls as one, "You will be taken and killed. You will not save yourself."  
The next day I spoke of this to goode Pylades, who tolde me his daughter did meete with them when she chanced to deliver a message to the Ollivander household, and that they did tell her she would meet with someone important by the river that day. She avoided the river for days after, and so prevented this prophecy from coming to be, and thus, he told me, these Weyard sisters were not always righte._

The inevitable falsehoods of some of their premonitions was made known to the sisters themselves and their guardian as well, via the letters they received. Their reactions were mixed. Cian and Dian were both very dismayed. Nian expresses a belief that the former made fewer predictions for years after learning this fact, insecure in her possible accuracy. She says the same of Fian, but there is little doubt that she who was the humblest of the four sisters had the opposite reaction. As a boy, her son Tuck Ollivander, eventually the Fat Friar ghost, heard her say, "The most relieving day of my life was the one on which I learned I was not always right about the future." Others have attributed similar sentiments to her. Dian wrote extensively on her sister's excessive humility, saying of her, "She seemed afeared of being better than someone else, particularly someone her superior in rank and power scarede her most of alle."

As for Nian herself, she proved perhaps the wisest of the four when she, from all accounts, took it in stride. "It threw my sisters thoughts alle into stormclouds," she writes. "It was of little use, however, to crye out so on something so far beyonde our control or even our fulle understanding." Dian, too, wrote of Nian, "She always tooke our gifts as they came; ne'er asked for more as Cian and I did, nor begged for lesse as Fian did."

Giuletta, as it can be imagined, was not pleased by the Weyard sisters thus being elevated over she and her own siblings. Her behavior towards them grew worse still as a result, but that was not all. Three weeks before midsummer, as she prepared to return to Hogwarts, she begged her father to insist their parents take them home. Instead of throwing accusations that she knew her he might not believe, she declared that he wronged his own children by giving so many of their resources towards the support of these four. When reminded of the marriage contract, she suggested only Nian be kept and the other three sent home. This is an option Gaius-Claudius may have considered, though as far as anyone can tell it never reached the ears of the sisters, who would have certainly reacted very badly to the idea.

However, it was for more than charity or even a marriage compact that Gaius-Claudius was now inclined to keep the Weyard sisters under his roof. Word of them had spread around London, and they had turned into a great curiosity, and almost every wizard in the town and some even from outside it sooner or later found an excuse to see them and hear them speak their prophecies. Gaius-Claudius had also noticed that his business had increased, and he attributed it to the further notice of his existence. Both Nian and Dian voiced their beliefs that his biggest ambition in life was to make his business and the Ollivander name as big as possible, and he was reluctant to part with four useful assets to it, no matter even the discord they caused in his house.

When one of the girls mentioned to him the exact time Arthur and Sinead Weyard would arrive in London, Gaius-Claudius placed himself at the communal arrival fireplace to greet them, and it is known that he immediately broached the topic of his daughter's discontent. It is not known exactly how he portrayed it, though it is a safe assumption he made no references to the girls themselves being unhappy, though he must have known they were. Arthur and Sinead's reaction was exactly what he hoped for; they begged him not to turn their daughters away. He assured them he did not at all wish to part with them, but he may have also said something to leave them anxious.

Anxious they certainly were, when two hours later they were reunited with their children. Unaware that the girls themselves might have preferred to go home, the two of them spoke to them as if there was no question that they needed to stay with the Ollivanders if at all possible. At seven years of age, the girls never imagined their benefactor might have deceived their parents, and assumed that this was what they wanted, and what was to be done even if they did not like it. Feeling an obligation of obedience to their parents, they made no protest, and spoke no words about their unhappiness.

Talking amoungst themselves when they were alone, the girls decided that it was necessary for them to be as obliging and as little trouble to the entire Ollivander family as possible, in order to make sure they were not sent away in the future. At first this was easy; with Gecundus having now started his schooling at Hogwarts, during the school term there was noone in the household with whom they did not get along exceedingly well. Grianne Ollivander especially would speak of them very glowingly later in life, saying, "To my young mind, there were no kinder and better creatures," and she credits Nian with teaching her how to read and write.

Gaius-Claudius, too, noted an increase in their helpfulness around the household. He guessed at their motivations, saying, "I had, through only a little cleverness, gained a bit more than I had been giving. Already I was selling a greater average of wands every week thanks to the attention they had brought me, and now, they were providing me also with the most loyal of servants, paid only with their keep. I am a very wise and very fortunate man." As can be imagined, this only increased his determination not to give them up until it was time for their schooling.

When Giuletta and her brothers came home, they thus discovered the Weyard sisters having successfully solidified their position in the household, and in Grianne's affection, and availing themselves to the three of them the same way. The two boys saw the benefits of these new circumstances as weighing out the drawbacks. But everything that was happening only increased Giuletta's anger. To her, their expressing wishes to please her was no more than a strategy to insinuate themselves into the hearts of her family and lull them into complacency. It seems, however, that she soon came to realize she had no hope of ousting the intruders from her family home. Both Nian and Dian voice suspicions that she had some sort of meeting with her father that made this clear, for she came to them one day in tears, and told them angrily that, essentially, though they had won the war, she would make it so they could not enjoy the spoils of victory.

While she was at home, it was a promise she made good on. Within a couple of months, the girls were divided on how to deal with her. "Dian accusede Cian and Fian of wishing to be the martyr," Nian wrote on the matter, "and she was not truly wronge. Even she knew we coulde not actively offende any of the family, but she did not wish to further kisse the hand that slapped us. For my owne parte, I founde I loathed the part we did acte to our savage lady of the house. But I always did believye that to act on our angers to the possible detriment of our owne interests woulde but give our enemy aide. I feared I was the only one who thought with my heade, rather than my heart. But what was thus right to do, my heade coulde not know. Giuletta mighte still be a danger, or she might not be."

Fortunately, the girls would only have to deal with Giuletta for a few months out of the year, and otherwise, as they grew more used to their new life, there is evidence that they grew to like it. All four spoke of Grianne with as much affection as she did of them, and they were no worse than indifferent to everyone else in the household. They especially developed a rather overgenerous affection for their benefactor, which both Nian and Dian were embarrassed by later in their lives. "We were his dogs," wrote Nian, "He mighte have taken the sticke to us from morn till nighte, and we would wagge our tails and praise him for the attention he did pay, and woulde mean it moreover." Dian accused Fian of treating him as a god.

One undeniable benefit of being fostered by the wandmaker, besides the obvious improvement in standard of living, was that the girls thus received a well-rounded education, which they certainly would not have otherwise. Half a century earlier they might not have anywhere. At the end of the tenth century only the most elite young wizards even learned to read and write; often even their sisters weren't taught. But the influence of Hogwarts School, and its promotion of learning, was beginning to be felt on the higher echelons of wizarding society. Hogwarts co-founder Rowena Ravenclaw once famously lamented she could take hardly any students, for she insisted all those she taught either already be able to read to gain the ability almost quicker than was humanly possible. By the time she died, however, a new wave of thought had left the parents of many of her prospective pupils convinced their children would benefit immeasurably from being able to receive instruction from her, and from the likes of her.

Gaius-Claudius Ollivander was at the forefront of this quiet revolution. Knowledge has always been prized by wand-makers, for it is one of the most complicated sciences in existence, and the ability to read and write was necessary for the kind of contacts he kept. Although not all his siblings had even learned to read, let alone write, he taught all his children both, and he wrote with considerable pride of his generousity to the Weyards in teaching them as well. He complained, however, that it might have been wasted on Cian: "for she takes an hour to read but a short lengthe of parchment, and her writing, even after months of practice, is so poor that she mighte as well be unable to write at alle." Cian's writing would improve in later years, but all her surviving letters have excessively big lettering and the spelling makes them sometimes nearly incomprehensible, even in an age where Old English had no consistent spellings; she apparently never was able to manage written French.

Nian, on the other hand, was able to teach Grianne because of how rapidly she learned herself. Quicker than even the older boys, provoking jealousy and resentment on their parts, and, in her view, making her undesirable to them as a wife. "They coulde neither of them bear a witche smarter than them," she wrote, and this was an all too common attitude at the time.

As well as literacy and divination, the girls were instructed in magical basics beyond the practical spellcasting that most medieval homes were still restricted to. Gaius-Claudius took his children to herbologist's gardens and brewed fancy potions in front of them. They learned how to not only read runes, which were the common script at the time, but how to use them, and how to speak Gobbledegook.

This was the environment in which the Weyard sisters finished their first ten years of life, accepted as part of the Ollivander household but not as part of the family, somewhere above the position of the servants but not always distinguishable from them, meeting with their parents once a year and slowly growing away from them emotionally. By the time they were ready to go to Hogwarts, this had caused an extremely intense bond to form between the four girls. Dian waxed poetic about it on at least one occasion, describing her and her sister's feelings as they traveled with the Ollivander siblings to the castle's location:

_"__We were afeared for the first bitte of the journey, of the greate big carriage where we were pushed together, jostled and lurched and not even able to sitte down properly, and again when we thoughte of the vast strange place to which we had been tolde we were to go, where we only knew what the boys had tolde us in attempts to scare us, and we had taken them at their word for every tale, no matter how absurd. But then alle our hands touched each other, and our lips founde and kissed each cheek, and each of us knew the other three to be her solid grounde, her warm fire in bitter cold, her shore when the sea crashed arounde her. Strength flowed betwixt each of us like the bloode through our bodies, and when we spoke of the future, in tiny whispers no one else could hear above the carriage din, we saw only one thing, ourselves together, enjoying what fruits it bore, taking what blows it would deal.  
It is rather strange, and a testament to how little the boys knew us even after five years, that they ne'er left us with even any idea that we might face something more dreadful than alle the monsters and tortures their fancies created to feede our fears, that we might be separated._


	3. The Weyards' Early Years At Hogwarts

In 1034, when the Weyards sisters first began their schooling, it is generally agreed by historians that Hogwarts had been in existance as a school for well over a century. The last of the four Founders, Helga Hufflepuff, had died nineteen years prior. Her will had left the school to the charge of Professor Luke Charney, the most famous and talented of her particular students, who other than running Hogwarts is now most known as the author of _A Liste Moste Practikal of Magickal Herbs_, one of the first written informational volumes of its kind. His main wish for the school was for it to be more inclusive; even before ascending to position of the school's Master he had developed a program where illiterate students could learn to read and write as a brisk but not-impossible pace, one that remained in place until well into the 19th century, and may have been one of the biggest factors in the student body's explosive growth throughout the 11th century.

A wish even dearer to him was to see this student body entirely united. In the final years of Salazar Slytherin's presence at Hogwarts, all four Founders were so divided from one another that at least one student described it as "four separate schools with the false appearance of one." Before Slytherin's departure, most of the Godric Gryffindor's youngest students never even met him, and likewise the students taught by the different Founders rarely met, and when they did, they often took up the hostility of their teachers.

After Slytherin left, the other three made some effort to mend their breaches. Even Slytherin's former protégé Cornelius Scylla, who took over the running of his House, cooperated in merging the students' lessons and making them feel like they were schoolmates. But the feeling of division had come to stay. In the early 1000s, it was still more common for students and alumni of Hogwarts to describe themselves as being educated in "Gryffindor House at Hogwarts Castle" or "Ravenclaw House at Hogwarts Castle" than to say they were educated at the school itself. In an effort to change this, Charney not only insisted all students be taught by the same teachers regardless of their house, but even that first-years have all their classes together, though this practice was abandoned when the larger numbers of new students made it impractical.

Indeed, in many ways Charney was thwarted by his own success in growing the school. A visitor to Hogwarts castle in the 1010s described the number of students as a little less than a hundred. In 1171, the first year a record was kept on the names of those currently in attendance, 513 names were listed. This may only be about half of the student body today, but it should be remember that the population both the world and of Britain in general, and of the wizarding population by extension, was far lower than it is now. Perhaps it can best be summed up by Charney's boast, in 1082: "Because of me, every young witch and wizard on this island, be they from England, Scotland, or Wales, or even born in in France, be they born rich or poor, of witch or of Muggle woman, be their mother's tongue Latin, Saxon, or also from France, every one of them passes through my walls to have their minds and their magic formed."

But the increase in student load meant the house system, originally formed as a method of the four Founders to manage their students before they had further aid, once again became a vital method of organizing the student body. By 1044, after a few years of détente, relations between the four houses, though much more civil than previously, were again becoming distant.

Those who have read this account so far may have noticed distinct differences in the four Weyard sisters. They will have noticed that Cian and Dian are both bolder than the other two, Fian more humble, and Nian more wise and philosophical. They may have even noticed certain attitudes of Dian, particularly her malice towards Giuletta. Therefore it should come to no surprise to those familiar with Hogwarts Sorting procedures that when the four of them each in turn put on Godric Gryffindor's enchanted old hat, each found herself sent by its judgements to a separate house: Cian to Gryffindor, Dian to Slytherin, Fian to Hufflepuff, and Nian to Ravenclaw.

One can imagine the distress felt by all four at this turn of events, though at it happened, they were at first so uneducated about the workings of the house system that they did not comprehend how great a divide there was. From the start, furthermore, they were to indicate to their new housemates their refusal to forsake each other, thanks, partly, to one of the unifying measures taken by Master Charney. It was his policy that in the Great Hall, which had fallen in an out of use during the previous century but had by this time become the center of all schoolwide activity at Hogwarts, the students of the different houses should be mixed together at the tables. Each table in the Great Hall for much of the Middle Ages sat ten, and filling any up with members of only one House, until the 14th century, was frowned upon.

Therefore after the Sorting, all four girls, who were sorted last, ignoring invitations offered by their various housemates, placed themselves together at an otherwise empty table. This distressed not only their new classmates, but Master Charney, who went so far, during the following feast, to make his way over to their table and urge them to mix with their new housemates. But the girls, who had spent years never daring to disobey their elders, refused together. In fact, throughout much of their first year, they continued to eat all their meals together whenever they could, forsaking the company of others, and it was only when they had been at Hogwarts for months that they were willing to mix with others during mealtimes.

But try as they might, they could no longer live their lives together, especially because as one their housemates banded together to make it impossible. Time and again, whenever one of the sisters found some time to herself to go where she wished, it would immediately be taken from her by one of the elder students, who had the unofficial ability to command the younger students to do whatever they wanted, and the younger students did not dare disobey. The girls would be locked up in their towers, with their classmates 'forgetting' to tell them the passwords to get out, because at the time passwords were needed to get out of as well as into both Gryffindor and Slytherin Towers. Their teachers, too, participated in the enforced separation, finding any excuse they could to keep the girls after lessons had ceased, often as punishments for infractions that might have been overlooked in other students, which provoked resentment from them.

"After half a decade of necessary obedience," Dian wrote of this first year, "of having looked forwarde to freedom at Hogwarts Castle, to finde ourselves only the more oppressed, the more resented and resenting, Cian and I did agree it was not to bourne." While Fian appears to have been more compliant, and Nian made no outright protests at first, their Gryffindor and Slytherin sisters rebelled. Dian even turned vicious; at one point the school records her being disciplined for getting up in the middle of the night and performing the full Body-Bind on half of her housemates.

Eventually the first two sisters won the second two over to some measures. All four sisters became experts at sneaking out of their towers through windows and secret passages. By the time their first year had ended, they had developed the custom of sneaking out on an agreed night of the week, initially Friday but then changed each week, for fear the other students would find it out, and to spend two hours together. They did it even during the coldest time of the year, although when their nocturnal meetings became suspected they found it was no longer safe to stay in the castle and were forced to go outside. At this time, much of Hogwarts' modern-day grounds had not yet been cleared, and even its great lake was almost entirely surrounded by what was then known as Hogwarts Woods, later be renamed the Forbidden Forest, when it would be slightly further explored and a high amount of dangerous creatures found to be residing there, many of the more dangerous ones may not have even been there yet

Certainly there was no rule expressly forbidding entry to anyone. It is in fact unlikely that the Weyards were even the first to penetrate into its depths. They were, however, the first known humans to make contact with the merfolk native to Hogwarts' lake, as their frequent presence on its shores was noticed enough by the merfolk that appeared to them, apparently to demand what they were doing there. "We could not understand their words," Nian writes of this, "nor they ours, but I believe we eventually came to understand that we wished only to be left alone, and they wished only that their waters not be entered into, and so those became forbidden to us, which was inconvenient when we wished to brewe, but otherwise we did not mind much.

Early in their second year they finally set up a permanent camp in a tiny clearing about ten minutes walk from the edge of the woods. There they cleared out the tangled undergrowth and scarred the soil so that it would not grow back, using the since outlawed Carthage Curse. Their application of it was so powerful that when the wood was cleared over a century later an expert curse-breaker was needed to reverse the effect. They also wove a canopy between the surrounding oak trees with magically joined leaves and grass and stashed two old cauldrons. Here they would go not only for smooth, safe earth to sit on and shelter from the rain, but also to conduct experiments, both in Divination and other forms of magic, some very successful; as we will learn later, when they were sixteen it was there they successfully created a Portkey.

All four were in fact very intelligent, and very good students. Cian showed a particular talent for Charms; When they were thirteen the school records her being called upon to perform spells in front of the older students, because she had already mastered what many of them were still trying to learn. Nian also from the time she was twelve began filling any spare parchment she was able to get her hands on with notes writing from corner to corner, back and front, every inch, in tiny handwriting. It is estimated about half her notesheets survive, and they are filled with not only practical facts and instructions, but also even the earliest ones contain philosophical musings, logical theories, and a number of prophecies, some of which were confirmed during her lifetime, others of which were much further-reaching.

Giuletta Ollivander had by this time finished her schooling, and had in fact married, to one Mundungus Rowan, the son of a former Council member, an arrangement made by her parents. Gecundus and Gaineda were both still attending, both of them in Hufflepuff House with Fian. However, to her alternating delight and dismay, Fian was quick to discover her relationship to both was to change. After two years at school, Gaineda apparently had come to see herself as more "grown-up" and was embarrassed to be associated with a lowly first-year who so flagrantly violated the school's most sacred unspoken rules. Nian's notes record several instances of Fian reported thus being snubbed, as well as Dian's anger at the girl's ingratitude.

On the other hand, it appears that even at those times when all her other housemates forsook her, Gecundus, who had never paid much attention to Fian at home, would go out of his way to pay attention to her or show her kindness. There was even one time that he took several hours out to help repair her most of her robes, when one cruel housemate magically ripped them to shreds.

Both Nian and Dian speculate on his motives, though nobody besides himself could ever have been certain of them. It is possible he merely pitied Fian. Or, as he came of age and became aware that he was supposed to marry one of the girls, he began to think he ought to pay more attention to them, though he still said little to the three outside his house. It is even possible that he had privately decided he wished to marry Fian, finding her Hufflepuff traits most desirable in a wife, and was attempting to establish her as the most logical matrimonial choice in both the eyes of his father and those of the sisters. However, it was extremely unusual for upper-class children to take such initiative in involving themselves in their parents' marital arrangements for them, and all accounts emphasize his dutifulness towards his family, and it seems more likely he continued to assume Nian would be his wife, and Fian his future sister-in-law.

The sisters themselves, naturally, soon formed other ideas on the matter. Nian notes that they never actually outright discussed the matter, "but when we spake of Gecundus, it was always with the thought, lodged in each of us, that he shoulde marry Fian and none else, and, in time, the other three of us ceased to think of ourselves as potential wives for him at alle, so much did we believe this woulde happen."

When Grianne came to Hogwarts, she joined Nian in Ravenclaw. "This was unfortunate," Nian writes, "because of us four, I was the one she loved leaste." Nian records that she still sought out her company the first few days, but later became more involved with her own friends, who were probably quick to remind her of Nian's betraying her housemates for her sisters. After that, they only kept each other company occasionally.

It is not impossible that, with time, some tentative friendships formed between the sisters and their other housemates. But there is no record of it for either Nian or Dian, suggesting, at the very least, there was noone either of them valued very much. Nor did Cian ever show indication of forming any relationships that would last beyond their school days. In Hufflepuff House, however, even a girl like Fian would not be entirely left out of the general feeling of brotherhood that began to form when the students were fourteen and fifteen, and for those that stayed in the school until they were of age, Fian included, connections were formed that would last for a number of years afterwards. Letters survive written to Fian when she was in her forties from four different former housemates.

In fact, as the girls got older, Nian too found her housemates treating her better, and no longer trying to hinder her attempts to meet with her sisters. This might have been out of respect for her growing seniority, or out of a greater maturity that viewed the divide between the houses more as a self-made construction rather than a sacred boundary, or a combination of these. Matters were different, however, in the less logic-driven environments of Gryffindor and Slytherin Tower. Cian continued to endure harsh remarks and attempts to keep her restrained, and Dian and her own housemates remained hostile to each other. The last wrote numerous soliloquies on the misery she endured.

It no doubt made the lives of all four easier that when they turned fifteen their classmates started to leave. Until the 16th century, the majority of the students left Hogwarts earlier than they would now, when they had learned all they felt they needed to know, or when they felt it was time for them to go out and work. In the case of witches, also, it was typical to leave when they married, which sometimes happened with girls as young as twelve, though by the 11th century this had become uncommon.

This even influenced the mindset of the Weyards themselves; when they turned sixteen, they celebrated what they imagined to be Fian's upcoming nuptials, and expressed their great regret that she would not stay with them. When they returned to Gaius-Claudius Ollivander's house that spring, their expectations became known, both that the wedding would happen immediately and who the bride would be.

Their benefactor, meanwhile, had never before heard anything to indicate that his son would not marry the eldest, and though he knew such a marriage had not been absolutely set, that between themselves they had settled on his choice of daughter-in-law without his knowledge angered him. However, as it happened, he had not thought of necessarily marrying Gecundus and Nian immediately, believing the girls, with their special gifts, ought to be given more time in school for them to develop. He told them this, and made it clear it was his authority, not theirs, which would determine which of them his son married.

For the first time, the girls felt true anger at him, Dian especially. "He spake of our marrying," she wrote, "as if he bore a father's authority, and he was not our father. Our father only spake of one of us marrying Gecundus, and only he coulde spake which of us."

At this time in history, arranged marriages were so common amoung the upper classes that it was only natural for children raised there to believe that was how it was done, so much that they would accept a father's authority over their future without question. But this was not at all true for the lower ranks from which the Weyards had been born. Their parents had found each other with no assistance expected or given from any of their parents, and while Arthur Weyard had consented to one of his daughter's marriages, it is likely he did this less as something he would do _per se_, but simply because he accepted it what was to be done to get them a better life. He would have seen no reason to decide himself which. But this was not something Dian Weyard appeared to think of. After ten years as the ward of an aristocrat, she had so absorbed the aristocratic mindset and seen herself as belonging to this class that she apparently gave her father the prerogative to behave accordingly.

However, Gaius-Claudius Ollivander was not sure, by the end of the spring, if he himself wished for Nian to be the sister to marry his son. He wrote of her at the time, "her intelligence is making her arrogant," and noted that she did not appear to like Gecundus very much. The other three girls, in his eyes, all appeared to be warmer to him, Fian especially. He may in fact have decided Fian was to be the girl himself, but at that point in time his pride forbade him to acknowledge it, at least to them. And so the question remained unresolved while the girls returned to Hogwarts.

He is not the only one to accuse Nian of arrogance. Many of her classmates did the same, especially those in the other three houses. To be sure, inter-house rivalry would spur such comments from the latter. But their sentiments were echoed also by the teachers, including those who had not attended Hogwarts and were truly neutral when it came to the houses, and even by her own sister; Dian uses the word to describe her more than once.

It should be remembered, of course, that throughout history there has been a double standard between the sexes, and what has been seen as normal or even laudable in a man has often been disparaged in a woman. It is perfectly plausible Nian was no more arrogant than anyone might be in her position. She was, after all, an exceptionally intelligent young witch, encouraged by the environment of Ravenclaw Tower to think highly of this and make herself even more knowledgeable, knowing also she had a special power she was only beginning to comprehend the true rarity of, and the oldest of four sisters, the younger three more likely than not to defer to her, and who, further, had violated all her school's unwritten rules, and more or less gotten away with it.

As the sisters settled into their forest retreat, meanwhile, Nian's authority grew. Their experiments and excursions were becoming more complicated, and she wanted them to be more ambitious still. She began planning them beforehand, completely on her own. There are multiple rolls in her surviving collection, filled from pole to pole with her unmistakable handwriting detailing her schemes and plans, including specific tasks to be assigned to her three sisters. It is known that some of these plans were carried out; indeed one roll had the contents of its lists checked off, and that some of them were not, though for a few it is unknown whether anything ever came of them. All evidence points to her going unchallenged within the group.

From their first five years, the Weyard sisters can boast of one great contribution to wizarding knowledge, in the uses of St. John's wort. Before then, it was a plant paid more attention to by Muggles than by wizards; the Muggle religion gave it sacred properties. It was already known to be useful in general healing potions, particularly for injuries resulting in major blood loss, but its use in magically debilitating injuries was then sporadic at best. But then a particularly vindictive housemate began slipping Dull Powder under the then fourteen-year-old Cian's pillow. She who was usually the most cheerful and upbeat of the sisters to turned so depressive. She even stopped doing her schoolwork or tryinging to keep company with anyone. Both Nian and Dian write of finding her weeping on the castle steps multiple times. Eventually she found the powder and confronted the housemate, who stopped. But she had been exposed for more than six weeks, which left her beset by a lingering gloominess.

Today she would have a whole plethora of potions and charm therapies for getting this treated, but at the time Dull Powder was able in this way to do people permanent damage. It was always a point of resentment on Dian's part, at the very least, that the witch responsible was allowed to stay at Hogwarts and apparently never suffered very much punishment. A determined Nian, however, began looking at all the healing herbs she could get her hands on or hear about. She wrote to Gaius-Claudius about it, who wrote to other wandmakers, but they did not seem to have any knowledge which Nian found useful. Eventually her efforts paid off; Cian discovered it aided her mood to take a potion which mixed St. John's wort with several other ingredients, most notably alihosty roots. She took it constantly for several months before she apparently went through two weeks of very high giddiness before she went off it.

Thrilled with their discovery, the Weyard sisters found five more uses for the various parts of the plant, and their findings would serve at the basis for centuries of research after them. Just about all modern uses of the plant stem from the Weyard sisters' findings.

However, they did not keep at it for very long once Cian was fully recovered. Their main reason was very simple: it clearly had nothing to do with divination. Although youthful curiousity and especially Nian's inquisitive nature had them dabbling in all sorts of subjects in the woods, they never forgot their own gifts, and their overall intention was always first the improvement of them.

Within the castle walls, as well, they always took whatever opportunities there were engage in extra study. Hogwarts did not at this time have a permanent Divination Master, but they were visited by an aged Moorish seer, Umar al-Fahim, for a few months every three years. In their second and especially fifth year at Hogwarts the girls became his shadows, even begging him during the latter to remain in Scotland a longer. The old Saracen, who was received begrudgingly by teachers who would not have allowed it had they known anyone else they could bring in to teach his subject, and greeted with hostility by the students, wrote several times how amazed he was by having pupils so eager to see him. His gratitude, as it happened, kept him from being able to tell them much about their own futures, but in the early days of their second year he did foresee one event, for when they were sixteen, that he apparently chose not to tell them about, though an account of it survives in a letter written to his brother.

This was the event by which they might have had the most influence in the world within their own time, immortalized them, eventually, in Muggle theatre, albeit in an extremely grotesque form, and in the short term would give them the confidence needed in their abilities to assert themselves and establish themselves as known Seers, but in the long term would eventually contribute to their end, once they found the full truth about how two Muggles had acted because of what they had told them.


	4. Meeting with the Muggle King of Moray

In the winter of 1040, the Weyard sisters grew more focused on the task of creating a Portkey. Why is not certain. Nian writes of no particular motive, and while Dian expresses a wish to flee from Hogwarts and go out and live on their own, it seems unlikely that her three sisters would have been willing to go along with this plan. By their sixteenth birthday that February, they were using weak semi-Portkeys to travel all around the forest, and chosen the place to which they planned to transport both themselves and their cauldron with a stronger one. They chose a certain part of the Great Glen, where they believed, mistakenly as it happened, that lacewings were abundant, and they could gather a supply to brew several potions they had been working on.

The day they made their journey to the northern part of the Glen, Nian described the weather as "foule one moment and faire the next, it was early Aprile and we did agree before that we did not feare to get wette, though as it did happen, we did not face more than the lightest of rains." It was a day when the illness of the Charms teacher left them free in the middle of the day, and so they went then, and though they did not discover their expected lacewings, they instead gathered several herbs and a pair of slugs, with which they combined the horse's blood they had brought with them to create a potion in common use at the time for increasing an individual's speed, before the increasing comfort and convenience of broomsticks caused it to fall largely out of use. Both Nian and Dian describe their mood as downright giddy with their success, and how they were continually dancing around their cauldron and singing with their excitement.

One imagines the sight they were doing so. The swiftness potion they were working on sent out lightning when boiling, and Nian describes them as almost screaming, and getting faster and wilder, as time went on. To a pair of Muggles who may have never before met with a wizard or witch, they must have been an awesome and terrifying sight, one that would confirm all the stereotypes they had of witches as being as dangerous and uncontrollable as they were powerful. And so that must have been the impression given to the pair of Muggles that did indeed happen upon them.

At this time, Mac Bethad mac Findlaich, more commonly known as Macbeth, was the king of the local area, which the Muggles called Moray, and included the northern section of the Great Glen, and was at war with the then King of Scotland, Donnchad mac Crainin, also known as Duncan I. It seems that day, for reasons known only to the Muggles, he went riding out towards the southern border of his lands with one of his captains. His name, sadly, remains unknown. The two men did not give it to the girls, and nor did any of them discern it through their abilities. The king does not seem to have reacted very much to Nian knowing his name; likely he expected nothing different from a quartet of mysterious young women dancing around a cauldron. Instead, almost playfully, he asked them what else about himself they could tell him.

Nian, Cian, and Dian were all able to tell him quite a lot about himself. Nian described his history coming to her even as she recited it, how his father had been killed twenty years previous by MacBeth's own cousins, and he had avenged his death by killing them one by one, burning down a house with the last of them in it with fifty of his men, with the aid of the man's widow, who after became his own wife, how he had submitted to the authority of the King of Denmark, and then to Duncan I when he had claimed the throne of Scotland, and how he had recently grown angry with the young Scottish King's difficulty with dealing with the invaders from the south. Cian then advised him that Duncan I was intending to attack Moray, and she was able to give him what appear to be accurate dates for the event. Finally Dian proclaimed that he would win the battle, Duncan I would be killed, and MacBeth himself would claim the throne of Scotland.

Fian, however, apparently experienced no foreknowledge of MacBethï¿½s life, and while the other girls talked, simply stood there silently. Years later, she would claim that her pride was hurt by this, and that it made her too eager in what happened next, when she instead had an outright vision of the future, which was less common for the girls, who when they were awake received knowledge directly to their brain far more often than "seeing" or "hearing" something from the future with their senses. This is strange, as it was neither consistent with her general character, nor the general way the Sight is known to work. It is hard to believe she would lie about such a thing, but it is possible she was remembering her motivation wrongly.

The vision seems to have been triggered when the captain, having noticed Fianï¿½s lack of participation, asked her gently if she saw anything. Both Nian and Dian describe how all her features flew wide before her eyes rose up, clearly looking at something in a place where there was nothing to see. It was not the absolute first time this had happened to one of them when conscious, and they recognized the state of vision quickly enough. Dian even told MacBeth she would no doubt come out of it with the entire history of his future.

But as she said this, Fian came out of her vision, and said, "No, I see him not. I see too far away and ahead." Pointing to the captain, she said, "I see a woman of his blood. I see the thrones of England and Scotland combined under her sceptre. She rules the Welsh too, but that is not to notice, because she rules so much. All of the Emerald Island, and then lands in Africa and ones very, very East of here, and even cold plains on a land beyond the western sea that the great Vikings have barely discovered, and none else shall for hundreds of years. All of them hail her as their Queen. She is an Empress also, and her Empire is so vast and great that neï¿½er does the sun set on it. And her children shall claim not only her own throne, but shall marry into all the royal families of Europe, though a secret curse in her own blood shall make many of them weak and vulnerable to the wounding. Ah, captain, your own life shall pass away unknown, but your blood shall live forever."

Those familiar with the history of the British monarchy will be quick to identify the woman in Fian's vision as likely being one Queen Victoria, ruler of the British Empire from 1837 until her death in 1901, during which the Empire was indeed spread so far over the world that a common phrase was "the sun never sets on the British Empire." Her nine children and their children married into most of the royal houses of Europe, until she was nicknamed, "the grandmother of Europe," but she also was almost certainly the origin of a gene that made her male descendants susceptible to hemophilia.

One may assume she was somehow descended from this captain, who, as will be discussed later, was survived by one son about whom we know very little. Many tales have since sprung up about him, and when his descendants may have married into the British royal line, or the German nobility from which Queen Victoria herself was descended, or even of the blood being introduced into her line through adultery, but there is simply no record of when it might have happened.

It is unlikely that even Fian, let alone any of the others present, could have understood the full scope of her prophecy. None of them save MacBeth would ever travel outside Britain (he late in life would make a religious pilgrimage to Rome, the center of the Muggle Church). Rhe two Muggles likely never learned in their lives to give much thought to what might exist beyond Western Europe. Even the girls never seemed to have any real notion of geography outside of the continent. In one of her letters, Cian foretold plenty of the goings-on between Rome and Constaninople (modern-day Istanbul), including the infamous sack of the latter during the Crusades a century later-while also expressing a belief that the two cities were only about 50 miles apart from each other.

In any case the captain did not seem to put much importance in Fian's words, at least that day. To the contrary, he laughed and said his son, apparently a toddler at the time, would be quite jealous if he ended up with a sister like that, but for the time being he had no daughters that he knew of. Meanwhile all four sisters were quick to surmise that the woman in Fian's vision was a little further descended from him than that, but none of them said so; both Nian and Dian speculate that all four found themselves too unimpressed by the limitedness of his mind.

Also, while neither writes about feeling any particular fear for their safety around the pair of armed Muggles, sixteen years of being taught that such men were dangerous probably left the sisters less than inclined to remain in their company for very long. So when MacBeth began to barrage them with questions about the finer details of Duncan I's attack, not all of which, Nian was quick to note, she even knew the answer to, she decided they should abandon the potion and flee, and to this effect cast a thick fog around everyone. The other three girls seemed to agree with her plan, as they helped strengthen the fog, and under the cloak of it they managed to get out of eyesight of the two men with the Portkey, and remained so until it activated again and returned them to Hogwarts Castle.

Both Nian and Dian describe their words to the Muggles as something they did not give much thought to in the weeks immediately after, and they did not think Cian thought much about it either. "Withe Fian," Nian writes, "it did stay more; ne'er before had she suche a vision." While the other three spoke of it to no one, Fian it seems told at least one or two of her friends, because it was known that the sisters had foretold it when news reached Hogwarts months later that Duncan I had perished in battle against MacBeth, and then that the King of Moray had become the undisputed ruler of all of Scotland.

It was not something that impressed every last witch and wizard in the school. Many saw even the biggest affairs of the Muggles as being insignificant to wizards, and the change of power did not seem to affect Hogwarts or Hogsmeade that much. A decade and a half later, a Muggle war would have results that would ultimately have a deep impact on everyone, wizard and Muggle alike, that lived in Great Britain, in England especially, but even as late as 1040, such a thing was still unfathomable to British wizards. Even so, they were aware that MacBeth's rise was a big and important thing to a lot of people, and that the sisters had been participants in it. This influenced the views of enough of most that the girls suddenly found themselves receiving the kind of respect they had never gotten from anyone before. The teachers especially treated them differently; Nian records on how all four of them were scolded and punished a lot less.

Three of them were not pleased by such an about face by a population that had scorned them when they had seemed less big and powerful. But Dian, by her own admission, reaped and enjoyed the benefits immensely. "Now those who did treat me badly I coulde give curse to," she writes, "and if I did not make any too stronge, the teachers did not punish." Even most of her housemates seemed to forgive her for such misdeeds; she was constantly invited to be in everyone's company and given precedence and the best chair or treats. In such an environment, too, her divinatory ability grew stronger and stronger, and she especially gained more ability to see on subjects she had an active desire to know about, so long as she was not too emotionally invested, thus alleviating much of her worry about not being able to answer her housemates' questions about the future; previously fear of not being able to and their potential reaction to that had impeded this.

This also changed their relationship with the Ollivander siblings still attending Hogwarts. It would have less time to change it with Gaineda, who was finishing up her final year of schooling, but even she began seeking out the company of Fian again, and to a lesser extent the other three. Things with Grianne changed completely. In Ravenclaw Tower, she often shadowed Nian. Outside it she would often seek out Cian or Fian. She still kept some distance from Dian, likely due to their being more distance the other three houses and Slytherin. The sisters were more indulgent to Gaineda and Grianne then they were to the rest of their classmates. They still felt very strongly a sense of debt towards their father, and of course they anticipated one of them, whom they still generally believed would be Fian, would be married into the family. Any chance to remain on the strongest of terms with them, as far as both Nian and Dian were concerned, was to be taken.

How it influenced things with the older Ollivander siblings is less clear, except that it does not seem it changed things with Giuletta very much. There did not seem at the time to be much contact at all between the Weyard sisters and the two boys. At this time, Gaius-Marcus was frequently traveling abroad, having become the main gatherer of woods and core materials for the family business, to the point that even island-wide news was not something he necessarily took notice of. But it is impossible to believe he took no notice at all, and that it had no influence with his later interaction with the sisters. For Gecundus, meanwhile, it seems to have become something to brag about to his friends, that he had one of four powerful sisters promised to him, but not something that made him see any need for further contact before the marriage. He had already spent a number of years anticipating marriage to a Seer, and seeing them publicly recognized might not have caused him to think much new of them.

Word managed to reach the Wizarding Council just as the girls themselves returned to London during Hogwarts' autumn break. It especially attracted the interest of a certain Horatius Beckett. The future head of the Council had not been on it when they had first interviewed the Weyard sisters. He had been accepted as a member in 1038, at the age of thirty-eight, not at all a young age for wizards at the time, but still a young one for membership on the Council; everyone else was at least in their forties. Even this early in his career, everyone who knew Beckett described him of a man of very high ambitions, and one who took interest in anyone or anything that might prove an advantage to him. It was he who urged the Council to see the girls again.

Most of the others saw no point to it. They had seen them, taken the actions they believed appropriate, and saw no reason to fuss over their predicting a Muggle-related event, however significant. He would later claim he argued with them about it for three weeks, although he was prone to exaggeration on these subjects. However long it took him, he did eventually persuade them to summon the Weyard sisters once again.

They appeared before the Council on September 17, and most of the questions put to them were from Beckett, and related to high level politics, some of them related to Muggle leaders, but most to wizard ones. Here, he encountered considerable disappointment: the sisters foreknew very little about the subjects he was most interested in. Indeed, it appears from some of the comments from the other Council members that the affair was something an embarrassment for Beckett, at least in the eyes of those of them who had grown annoyed with his ambition and wished to see him embarrassed. Nian commented to Gaius-Claudius Ollivander, who accompanied them to the meeting, that the Council wouldn't contact them again, "Until one of us receives an offer of marriage, I think." To his mild disappointment, her foreknowledge did not include which of them would receive the proposal.

He likely would not have been entirely happy either had she been able to tell him it would in fact be her. It would come from another member of the Council. Jason Crabbe was a wizard in his 50s whose history had mainly been as a duelist and whose presence on the Council, on which he would only sit three years, history does not adequately explain. He was seemingly taken by Nian, whose beauty would be spoken about in more than one other source later in her life. One of his friends, Gorlios Emilion, describes his behavior the following night, when they were in each other's company, "Alle the night, it seemed he talked of naught but her, his words getting cruder the more he drank, though ne'er did he stop comparing her to divinity." At the beginning of October he sent a letter to Gaius-Claudius requesting her hand.

Gaius-Claudius was of two minds about it. On one hand, he was aware if he played it right, to marry Nian off to a member of the Council could be very advantageous to him. On the other, he did not like Crabbe very much, and he was still nominally planning to marry Nian to Gecundus, though he was very aware now he that with four options of bride for his son, he could easily give one of them up. It appeared he sent no response while he was attempting to make up his mind. Nor did he tell the girls, perhaps suspecting already that they wouldn't see him as having the right to agree to a match their father had had nothing to do with at all.

But Crabbe was not a patient man. When his letter went unanswered, he saw himself as being scorned and insulted, and decided to take revenge. On October 14 he presented to the Council a letter supposedly from a grieved old wizard accusing Gaius-Claudius of having deliberately sold him a defective wand. Those that knew him and knew how things stood between him and the family must have at least suspected the accusation false. But when the means to prove it had not yet been invented, and Crabbe was able to produce a disgruntled old wizard, known only as Trilion, whom he presumably paid off, they were obliged to investigate the complaint. When they summoned Gaius-Claudius to answer before the Council, Crabbe also apparently talked them into summoning the sisters as well, saying that if their guardian was coming anyway they might as well take the opportunity. Likely he wished to humiliate Nian's guardian in front of her.

Unfortunately for Crabbe, though fortunately for Gaius-Claudius, Trilion, who was supposed to attend and make his complaint to the offender's face, for unknown reasons failed to show. All four of the Weyard sisters were so distressed by the whole affair that they were unable to divine much in relation to it, and could gain no knowledge of Trilion's whereabouts, or anything about him at all. While several members of the Council argued how much of an effort they should make to find the man or if they should go forward without him, Gaius-Claudius took advantage of the pause to inform Crabbe he had still been considering his request, but now the answer would certainly be no. This angered Crabbe greatly, and he called Gaius-Claudius "a liar, through and through," and stalked out and did not return. With neither of the men willing to make a complaint against him present, and receiving confident denials from him of any wrongdoing, the Council eventually decided to ask the girls more questions instead.

As it became clear their guardian would not be suffering any serious consequences from Crabbe's allegations, the girls recovered, and though they still were apparently able to please Beckett very little, they were able to tell the rest of the Council more about their own lives. One member, young Peyton Lazarus, credited their warning that his wife would receive a snakebite as saving her life, as it caused him to stock antidote in his home. Most vitally, they warned the Council that there would be a Goblin rebellion the following year. As a result, they prepared, and were much better equipped to deal with this rebellion when it did indeed happen.

Even then, they were aware the warning might very well prove useful, and for the second time the Council discussed whether they should act in response to the Weyard sisters. This time they agreed they would take measures to keep them in London once their schooling was done, and might even call them back occasionally from Hogwarts before then.

The girls were made aware of this before their return to Hogwarts for the winter. While Fian was not happy about it, the other three, by Nian's admission, all developed a bit of arrogance over it, bragging to their housemates and looking forward to a possible summons back to London with the arrival of every owl from the south. When throughout the entire winter one never came they were taken down a few pegs, with some even accusing them of lying about it. The girls were dismayed, humbled, and confused. Dian throughout her life would even express skepticism the Council had ever had any attention of having anything to do with them until they were eighteen.

This is particularly strange of her when the Council's public records make clear it was far more complicated than they, away at Hogwarts, had any idea of. For one thing, it would have cost more for the Council than they likely realized. For another, not all of the Council supported the decision that had been made about even keeping them in London once they were done at Hogwarts, let alone doing anything before then. Crabbe was in particular against it, and while everyone was aware this was probably because of his perceived snub, the multiple angry speeches he made on the matter probably could not but have some effect on them. Also, at heart several more members were wary of knowing too much about the future, either because they believed knowing only some details would cause them to be imprudent in reacting to it and not think about possible complications they had not been forewarned about, or simply because they were not comfortable with having this kind of power.

In any case, no summons came at all before the girls' eighteenth birthday, after which it had become understood that they would leave Hogwarts, and one of them would be married to Gecundus, and husbands might also be sought for the other three, though Dian, at least, continued to consider defiance against any arrangement not approved of by their father. Gaius-Claudius, as noted earlier, he had already worried about such a possible objection. His solution, however, was quite simple. He decided that as their parents were now traveling to London in the spring when they knew their daughters would be there, and the girls were to finish school then as well, he would get Arthur Weyard to delegate his authority to decide his daughters' marriages. When writing about the matter beforehand, he expressed a belief that the other man would have no objection to doing so, assuming that the wandmaker knew what was best for the girls-indeed, Gaius-Claudius believed this to only be the sensible thing for him to do.

However, this would prove a more complicated matter than he had anticipated, and the opinions and wills of multiple people would ultimately going into determining the marital fates of all four sisters, which would be the next factor in setting their lives up before the Council finally contacted them again.


	5. The Marriages of Cian and Fian

The Weyard sisters left Hogwarts in March 1042, never to return again as students. Their goodbye to the castle had little sentiment; Dian even described it as a good riddance. Cian, however, apparently expressed some strong verbal regrets to her sisters about abandoning their refuge in the woods. Nian also wrote that she herself would miss having a place where she was the authority, when everywhere else the girls were subject to someone else's. She did not expect this to change: throughout history in both wizard and Muggle society married women have been expected to obey their husbands or at least behave in a way that suits their wishes. Muggle society at the time made a married woman virtually her husband's legal property, and while wizarding society did not go quite this far, there was still the general expectation.

Arthur and Sinead Weyard had not yet arrived in London, and Gaius-Claudius was not entirely certain when they would, so at first he said nothing to the girls about any of them marrying. This confused them, and made them wary, worrying that he had some sort of plan in mind for marrying them off in such a way they might especially dislike. Dian especially dreamed up schemes that her sisters thought unlikely, but all four were concerned.

Finally at the end of the months the parents arrived. As had been his custom from the time he had taken the girls in as wards, Gaius-Claudius first met with them alone. At that time he explained what he intended to do, and asked them to order the girls to marry whom he chose for them.

Their reaction was not what the wandmaker had been hoping for. A good deal of shock resulted when they were brought face-on with the notion of parental arranged marriages in a way they hadn't been when agreeing to the marriage of an unspecified daughter had simply been part of an unusual foster arrangement. Sinead was especially upset at the idea, protesting that they had never agreed Gaius-Claudius should be given such absolute power over their daughters' lives. Arthur voiced his agreement. He conceded that one of the girls ought to marry Gecundus because they had agreed to that, and Gaius-Claudius had fulfilled his part of the bargain by taking them in and giving them a better life and opportunities. But beyond that, he insisted, Gaius-Claudius had no rights, and he would not give him any.

When the parents went to their daughters and related to them this conversation, it emboldened them, and when Gaius-Claudius next spoke to the family, it was to hear from them that Fian was willing to marry Gecundus and the other three would marry as they liked. The other three even threatened to quit his roof and go home with their parents if he tried to insist otherwise, though Nian admits in her writing that they probably would not have made good on the threat when it would have parted them so drastically from Fian.

Gaius-Claudius, ever a clever man, responded in two parts. First he agreed that Gecundus' bride would indeed be Fian. It is unlikely he thought this at all a bad idea anyway; his writings indicate he would have been reluctant for his son to marry either Nian or Dian, and that he liked Fian's obedience and humility. Then he said that if they absolutely wished to arrange their marriages by themselves, he would not stand in their way, but added that if they did this, it was unlikely they would be able to marry anyone of better standing in society. He spoke of how all young aristocratic wizards married at the dictates of their parents, and no parent would consent to a match with a witch who did not have elders to speak for her, preferably ones used to moving about in their society, which their parents of course were not. They would do much better in life, he urged them, if they accepted his services as matchmaker.

His tactic worked. The Weyards did first insist they had the final right to make all decisions, but then agreed to let themselves be guided. Gauis-Claudius assured to them that their destinies were truly theirs to control, saying many words to that effect before the interview concluded, and even offered to house their parents until the marriages were all conducted. Then after it, by his own admission, he went on almost exactly as he had before, except that when he talking to people and sent out inquiries as to who might be interested in marrying one of the sisters, he did so only for Nian, Cian, and Dian, and no longer had to warn that one of them would have to be married to his son.

No one records any particular reaction from Gecundus when he learned the sister he was to marry was to be Fian. It is possible he did not really have one. He may have gotten the impression that this was, at least, what the sisters themselves wanted, and perhaps been as prepared for the eventuality as he would have been for marriage to Nian. At least he never showed any displeasure, and is not likely to have felt it. He knew Fian better than the other three and liked her better than Nian. Although there was no notion of love on either side, and would not be for years, he and Fian, who would spend the days after the match was decided on in very common company with each other, developed and spoke of a very strong liking for each other, and Nian, at least, expressed a belief then that the marriage would be a happy one.

The engagement was officially announced on April 19, the same date in which a friend of Gauis-Claudius, an extremely wealthy wizard named Thorodan Cragg, announced that his daughter-in-law was pregnant with his first grandchild. He decided to hold a banquet in honor of the upcoming baby, and invited Gauis-Claudius to present his son and daughter-in-law to be in places of honor. So that evening, the entire Ollivander family, plus the Weyard sisters and their parents, rode down to Cragg's farming estate for what was by far the biggest ever event any member of the Weyard family had attended.

This would not be an evening without its stresses, particularly for Arthur and Sinead. They were clad in the sort of robes not they were not as all used to moving about in, lectured for hours on the etiquette of a society they still knew very little about, and told that one misstep from them could ruin the prospects of their three unengaged girls. For Fian, too, it was a night mainly of anxiety. She would never be comfortable with being the guest of honor, even many years later when it became a common thing, and this first time, with her being placed even above the other three, was the one of the most trying ordeals she'd faced so far. But while Nian, Cian, and Dian sympathized for their distressed sister and parents, their experiences of the banquet were generally positive. They all enjoyed seeing the big estate and great house, and meeting so many rich and important people whom they were presented before as guests of honor, because Gaius-Claudius saw to it that all four sisters were given this.

They realized that part of their benefactor's reason for that was to bring them to the attention of potential husbands and their families. He even spoke words to the people they met in front of them and their parents to that effect. However, they themselves did not think they would object to every last one of the suitors presented to them that night, and some of them they liked well enough. Dian especially took a fancy to one of them, a fiery warlock known generally as Jack the Aggressor. When Gaius-Claudius insisted he was a bad choice and refused to enter negotiations, she spent over a month trying to persuade him to change his mind, until he was announced as engaged to someone else, resulting in an afternoon of her crying on her bed.

Amoung those first introduced to the Weyard sisters that night were Jason Overdramblus, then only twenty-four years of age, who decades later would become Headmaster of Hogwarts, Gumboil of Wye, a Muggle-born wizard about eight years the sisters' senior, who had already achieved fame for his dueling skills, and famous Potioneer Golpalott of London, who at the time was in his thirties and unmarried. All three expressed interest to Gaius-Claudius both that night and after, much to his delight. So did two elderly wizards, but when the Weyards made it clear to him they could never be prevailed upon to marry men of their age, his wisely chose to focus his efforts on bringing about marriages with the younger three candidates.

However, matters with Cian were about to be taken out of his hands all together. Scarcely a month after Jack the Aggressor married and left him, he believed, without any complications from the girls themselves having any particular preferences, she, while buying food for the household, a common errand for all four girls at the time, would first meet Philus Hudd. He was young wizard of nineteen, whose father grew vegetables just outside London, and who had newly taken over the task of taking them and selling them in the city. The two of them apparently were attracted to each other immediately, and enough so that Cian two days later volunteered to go buy food again in the hopes of meeting him a second time.

A second visit to his stall was followed by a third, and a third by a fourth, and it did not take long for a full-blown romance to blossom. Her sisters knew of everything from the start, and aware their elders might object, helped keep Gaius-Claudius from any suspicion for a number of weeks, sometimes by lying and saying they had gone to buy the food that day. When Cian realized how serious her feelings for Philus were, she confided in her parents, who saw no objection to a marriage that reminded them of their own, and then also helped her keep the secret.

But finally Gaius-Claudius began to think something was up, and insisted one day on accompanying Cian on a multi-purpose shopping trip. While at his vegetable stand she and Philus did their best to behave with decorum to each other, but neither had the ability to fool the perceptive wandmaker. Nor, in fact, did Cian have the ability to deny her feelings for long, when subjected to direct questioning after their return home.

Unlike with Jack the Aggressor, Gaius-Claudius did not entirely object to Philus Hudd _per se_. He certainly did not have the wealth or high rank he would've preferred to marry all three of Nian, Cian, and Dian off to. But he was a good and decent young man, and when Gauis-Claudius traveled out to his father's farm the next day, requested a meeting with him, and asked about his intentions, when he heard the boy say he was trying to work up the nerve to make an offer of marriage, he described himself as genuinely moved.

At this point in time, however, he had very nearly successfully concluded negotiations with Overdramblus over Cian, and had even been on the verge of talking to Cian herself about it. In fact, given the attentions Overdramblus had paid to Cian during his visits to the house, she likely would have been aware of things herself had her mind not been so occupied by Philus that it was causing her to overlook the behaviors of any other man around her. Nian and Dian express some confusion as to why he didn't notice that she was not responding to him very attentively, though he himself would later write he was sometimes blinded by arrogance in his youth, so perhaps this was merely an instance of that.

Unwilling to give this imminent success up, Gaius-Claudius instead told Philus that he intended to marry her to someone else, and left the boy heartbroken before going home to claim to Cian that Philus did not intend to marry her, and he and Overdramblus had agreed he could marry her, and urged her to at least consider him. It was a deceit he would come to regret very quickly. The following morning Overdramblus paid a visit, one which both men thought beforehand would result in a final agreement, and Cian greeted him at the door. Heartbroken but determined, she told him right then and there that he might not want to marry her when her heart belonged to another. Asking her further about it, Overdramblus learned that Gaius-Claudius had falsely claimed a deal had been made already. Angered both by this and by the clear pain she was in, he informed her that her guardian had lied to her about at least one thing, and that while he respected her for her honesty, he nonetheless could no longer be interested.

Cian, who had already found it difficult to believe Philus really had not intended marriage, and had only done so because she did not think Gauis-Claudius would lie to her about it, went to her parents and told them all. That evening Arthur Weyard went to the market himself, tracked down Philus Hudd, and learned the rest of the truth. He immediately shook hands with the boy and told him he consented, and that the marriage should take place, though he was not yet sure when or how. Understanding that there was essentially a crisis with their long-time benefactor to be sorted out, Philus readily agreed to wait as long as need be.

Indeed, the family now was not entirely sure what to do in reaction to learning they'd been lied to. The next morning, parents and children held council together to discuss their options. Cian and Dian were for cutting all ties to the Ollivanders, breaking Fian's engagement in the process, and trying to do in life without any further help from them. Fian, however, surprised the others with how unhappy the idea of breaking the engagement made her. She still insisted she was not in love with Gecundus, but was unable to articulate her exact feelings for him. Nian, trying to analyze it years later, theorizes she had simply grown so accustomed to the idea that it was difficult for her to consider any alternatives. But at the time, not understanding why she was so upset and so not knowing how to alleviate her distress, it was enough to make Nian and the parents hesitate to do anything that would part her from her betrothed. It led them to end the meeting with no decisions made.

Meanwhile, when Overdramblus met with Gaius-Claudius and broke negotiations off, he also informed him that he had exposed his lie to Cian. Once again he had to move quickly to placate the family. But as Overdramblus was now lost and he had no other objection to Philus Hudd, he decided that Cian's marriage, too, must now be conceded to. The family was still deliberating when he rode out again to the Hudd farm. This time he met with the parents, who had already learned of events from their son and at first were not happy to see him, but after speaking a few words about a possible misunderstanding, he declared he would offer Cian for their son, and with her, a sizable dowry. It was enough money that even though they probably didn't believed his claims about a misunderstanding, the parents were willing to overlook the whole matter and consent. Philus, who merely wished to marry Cian and cared little for the details of how to do so, thanked him as well as any man could have wished.

He then invited the whole family to London with him, so that afternoon, Cian's beloved was brought to her and she found an offer of dowry also made to her that his parents made very clear they wished for her to take. Once again Gauis-Claudius' cleverness got him what he wanted. Cian did not dare turn the money down when she had no idea how Philus' parents would react if she did, her parents, quick to realize how much difference the money would in their daughter and new son-in-law's lives, voiced their approval immediately, and once their parents had spoken, while Nian still had lingering doubts, Dian and Fian were also all for forgiveness, and seeing what else remaining with the Ollivanders would get them.

Gaius-Claudius had paid a steeper price in agreeing to the second marriage than he had to the first. Instead of having three sisters to sell on the marriage market, he now had only two. And while he had been making progress with both Golpalott, who was interested in marrying Nian, and Gumboil of Wye, who was interested in Dian, he was now forced to reduce the dowries he had offered both of them for marrying their preferred sister. When word came around on why, and what had happened with Overdramblus, it did not help matters, and negotiations with both wizards faltered.

Having seen two sisters more or less choose their husbands for themselves, and knowing that Dian, at least, was very capable of expressing another preference to him, he decided to turn this to his advantage by getting the two girls themselves involved in the business of their marriages. Cian and Philus, meanwhile, wanted to be married as soon as possible, and Gaius-Claudius was also by now wanting to get the marriage of his son done as well. So he scheduled both weddings, and invited the two suitors to both. Then he met with each of the two girls in turn, talked up the two suitors, explained the cost Cian's dowry had exacted, and suggested that if they liked the men, they could perhaps try to charm them into accepting them for less.

Although both young women told him they would try, only one of them did so truthfully. They in fact had almost opposite reactions. Nian found the idea of being married to a learned man like Golpalott appealing enough that the idea of perhaps giving him some encouragement only seemed logical to her, or at least, she thought, she should see if he did indeed suit her. But while, ironically, Dian admitted that had she come to Gumboil of Wye on her own terms, she too might have found her benefactor's choice for her appealing, instead his method of talking to her provoked her temper, and she determined instead to turn her heart against him.

Cian and Philus' wedding was scheduled first, on August 20. The evening before was bittersweet for all four sisters, as they faced the idea of being even further separated than being sorted into different Houses at Hogwarts had ever made them. "Eache eyes did shedde tears thatte nighte," Dian writes, "and though we hadde before slepte two to a bedde, then we all four did crawle into one bedde, and dared anyone to parte us before dawne. Indeede, it was fortunate thatte Cian was going to one she helde so deare, for if it hadde been otherwise, mayhap we might notte have let her go."

It was perhaps because it was such an emotional night for her that Cian had what seems to have been by far the longest and most vivid dream she had in her entire life. Unfortunately, Nian and Dian describe her the next morning as too overwhelmed and frightened about her dream to describe it at all, and so she did not until nearly a year later when they were finally before the Wizarding Council again, by which time her memory of it was much poorer. But while the details are thus largely lost, the basic content of the dream was almost certainly that of the success of William the Conquerer's 1066 invasion of Britain, by which he and his followers would become the new ruling class of Muggle England.

Her sisters were able to get out of her, however, that the dream had nothing to do with their own lives. They managed to console Cian, turn her thoughts away from her troubling dream, and deliver her to the day's events with a sufficient amount of cheer. And so she and Philus Hudd were wed, and indeed by the end of the day things looked to be in a good enough situation for everyone. Cian was married to the man she loved, Fian and Gecundus showed themselves to be headed for a marriage equally desired by both, and Nian and Dian spent large parts of the day in the company of the two men Gaius-Claudius wished to marry them off to. Both those men said promising things to the wandmaker in the evening, though he did not record the details. Golpalott also requested to meet further with the wandmaker to discuss matters of wand core materials as potion ingredients. An obvious ploy to give him into his home more often, it was indulged. The next month he was often there, and often with Nian.

For three of the sisters, the picture looked very similar on September 26, when Fian was married to Gecundus Ollivander. Several people were of the opinion that Fian looked even happier than Cian had at the previous wedding. Not that Cian and her new husband looked at all unhappy. On the contrary, by all reports they had done very well in their first month of marriage. Buoyed by a good harvest as well as by the uses they had made put her benefactor's money, they had set themselves up to live comfortably close to both the market and to where Fian and her husband were going to live. Then during the evening Nian spent so much time with Golpalott it became the talk of everyone present, and by the end of it, everyone was expecting the news of a third wedding to follow shortly.

However, Gumboil of Wye had already been doomed to a very different day from the other three men. At the previous wedding, Dian, while being warm and encouraging towards him, had in fact been doing what she describes as an evaluation of him. But she also admits that she came into that day already biased against him, and it is easy to imagine most of what he did that day provided her with ample fodder she could use to enforce what it suited her to believe. Whatever subject of conversation he chose to broach seemed to indicate to her he was boastful, or condescending to her as a witch, or not understanding who she was at all, and any attempt to talk to her about her and her sisters' abilities as a Seer was intrusive and presumptive. Any attempts at gallantry were insulting, and lack of it indicated he was a lout. If he was trying to stay in her company he was demanding too much of her time, and if he wasn't seeking it out, he was being rude and neglectful for a declared suitor.

In short, there was nothing he could do that say that would not reinforce and, in Dian's mind, justify her decision to not only reject him, but to do so after a month of getting his hopes up. Unlike Nian and Golpalott, they did not see much of each other between the two weddings, but her behavior to him remained the same whenever they did, and his negotiations with her guardian, though slow, also seemed to be going well enough.

The day's plans did change, however, when they first met while waiting for the ceremony to begin. According to Dian, he sought her out, presumably expecting her usual welcome, and was surprised by her cold greeting, and indication she did not wish to talk to him. He first asked if he had done something to upset her, or if anything was wrong. When her answers were elusive, he grew angry, and started to raise his voice, until the others there began to look at them. It was only then, it seemed, that Dian realized, "the trouble he woulde make, and to do as I hadde planned woulde bring ruin on Fian's wedding daye." Not wishing to ruin her sister's big day, she decided to wait. She apologized to Gumboil then, but shortly after claimed Fian needed her, and throughout the rest of the day she avoided him as much as possible.

By the time Gumboil paid his respects to the bride and groom while preparing to leave at the end of the night, he had no doubt long realized that she wanted nothing more to do with him. Naturally he wanted to know why, although when he finally cornered Dian around that time, instead of asking she explain herself immediately, he requested a meeting the next day. It is possible he, too, wished to avoid ruining Fian's wedding day; by all accounts he was already treating her, Nian, and Cian like his own sisters. Dian, too, understood that she would have to settle the matter later, but still insisted she would not be able to meet with him for three days.

Ironically, she might have insisted on four, or at least until the evening instead of the morning, had she known that Nian and Golpalott themselves were planning to meet again that day, in the afternoon. Especially when it was a meeting Nian would later be certain would have ended in an engagement, had not the explosive outcome of Gumboil's final interview with her sister led to it not happening, and indeed nearly led to all things between the two of them being severed as well.


	6. The Marriages of Nian and Dian

Unfortunately, the only real account we have of the confrontation between Dian and Gumboil of Wye is Dian's. Gumboil himself was not a writing man, or one who discussed his more tender feelings with anyone, and it seems when Dian's rejection hurt him enough he therefore did not talk about it, except to heap scorn on her, and tell a few tales that are almost certainly untrue. Dian does not deal with this meeting either in any great length, in the account she wrote of her history with Gumboil, she dedicated only a single paragraph to it:

_We didde meet at the time and place at whiche we hadde agreed, and there I tolde him whatte I truly thought of him, giving him a fulle account of alle he had donne to offende. He didde shew himself to be a blinde foolle, for alle he had failed to see. He was taken with a madde fury, and hadde I been weaker with my wande I might have even feared for my swete lyfe. But he had not attemptede to laye hande nor wande on me, when he spoke curses to me insteade, if notte of the kind thate would do me harm, and then turned and lefte me there alone. Ne'er again woulde I lay eyes upon him._

The family might never have seen Gumboil again, but someone else would. Presumably looking to take revenge on Dian, and finding himself willing to do so by going after one of her loved ones, that afternoon he went to the market when Golpalott was known to be there making his daily purchases of potions ingredients, and contrived to "accidentally" fall in with him. An herbalist who recognized them both and witnessed the meeting, wrote about it in a letter to his sister, "All could see he meant it as no accident." According to him, Gumboil invited himself along with Golpalott while he finished up his shopping, and the latter, who of course would have no idea that they were no longer both seeking to marry a pair of sisters, seemed to welcome his company.

The two of them then went off together, and, unfortunately, theirs is another meeting of which there is little record. Golpalott did keep a journal, but he rarely wrote in great detail in it about anything other than his work, and in reference to that meeting, he only spoke of what Gumboil said to him as "enlightening," an adjective he would later retract when he learned that most of what the man said to him that day were lies.

Our only source of knowledge of what those lies were are third-hand, coming from what he told Gaius-Claudius, and what he told Nian much later, and then from what she wrote down about it. The basic gist of it appears to have been that not only had Dian admitted to him that she had led him on from the start without ever having an intention of accepting him, but he had also gotten out of her that apart from Fian, who had, according to Gumboil, only agreed to marry Gecundus to secure the financial support of the Ollivanders for her and her sisters, they had all agreed they would lead on and disappoint someone famous, as this would increase their powers. He accused Cian of doing that with Overdramblus.

He apparently was convincing enough that Golpalott not only believed him, but in his anger he decided to stand Nian up. All the afternoon and well into the evening Nian was left to sit waiting, until finally Gaius-Claudius Ollivander, having heard from Dian a less than honest account of what had happened between her and Gumboil, and determined to benefit from at least one advantageous match, decided to pay the famous potioneer a visit.

Golpalott, who had not believed any ill of the wandmaker, invited him in and informed him of Gumboil's accusations. This made him aware of Dian's deceit, but he was not entirely willing to believe the story that all of the sisters together had formed such a conspiracy, and he told the potioneer so. However, he seemed unwilling to admit to his own behavior in the matter of Overdramblus, and Golpalott seems to have sensed that he was being less than honest. It was likely partly due to this that his attempts to persuade him that Nian was innocent of wrongdoing did not succeed that night.

When he got home that night, he had a meeting with both sisters still living under his roof and their parents, where he informed Dian of the consequences of her actions, which by his own admission he might have exaggerated. All three of him, Nian, and Dian described her great distress upon learning what had happened. She first pleaded with her sister and parents for forgiveness, which they granted, as none of the three of them were ones to deny it when a member of their family had truly not intended the harm she had caused, and was so greatly repentant. Nian did call her a fool, however, something nobody protested. Gaius-Claudius ended the meaning with a promise to Nian to do what he could for her, one certainly sincere on his part.

However, if Dian's feelings of guilt did not go away after the meeting, in the hours afterwards, about which she later wrote, "I slepte not a wink thatte night," as she thought the situation over, she eventually found herself thinking, perhaps rightfully enough, that she was not the main one to blame, but that Nian's unhappiness was in fact because Gumboil had chosen to take his revenge in the way he had. By morning, when it became their unhappy task to visit their two married sisters and break the news to them, she had decided the most appropriate thing for her to do was take revenge herself on her former suitor.

Luckily for him, Gumboil of Wye, probably in reaction to such a great disappointment, chose that day to leave London, and in fact headed south and eventually left Britain all together for the continent, on which he would stay for a number of years. All of Dian's efforts to seek him out, done over the following weeks, would be in vain. However, her quest would bear other kinds of fruit.

She made her first attempt the day after, sneaking out of the Ollivander residence very early the next morning, before anyone else in the household woke up, and would repeat this pattern four more times in the following days. The first three days she lurked around Gumboil's residence, and met with no one more significant than his neighbors, who on her third visit told her they believed he was not currently there. One believed, mistakenly, that he had temporarily taken residence in a concealed place outside London. Her fourth morning out took Dian outside the city walls, trying to determine where that could possibly be. There she first met Tuck and Tarra Potter.

At this point in time, the later famous couple were so poor they did not even have a proper home. They were living out in the open, with only what spells they could cast to shield them from the elements, always on the move except when they had to stop to sleep, owning only what they could carry without too much extra effort. This was a life they took on with the same cheer that they would become known for doing everything with. When they happened upon a young, sad-looking witch, they thought nothing of inviting her to walk and talk with them until she had to go back home for the day.

To Dian, overwhelmed with anger and guilt and uncertainty about what she even wanted in life, the complete lack of these feelings from two people whom she recognized as being much more unfortunate than herself had been unfathomable. Their words and philosophy were ones which under most circumstances she likely would have scorned. But on that day, her mind was in the exact place where she instead listened, and their words had a great impact on her.

She certainly did not change her ways completely. She would even go out several more times in search of her vengeful lover. But each time, she would end the search early to instead spend the afternoon with her two new friends. She was by now becoming persuaded that the neighbor had either told or heard a false story, and with no other leads, it was not too difficult for the Potters to talk her into letting go of her quest.

Instead, the Potters introduced her to another friend of theirs, another potioneer named Sigrid Gurndrune. They probably did not do so with the thought that she might rope her into another quest for revenge, even one that would eventually prove unnecessary. And they certainly had not intended for Dian to goad Sigrid into openly trying to steal customers from Golpalott. Dian insists in her writings, however, that she did not need much encouragement. Apparently she was an ambitious woman.

By this time, several weeks had passed, during which Gaius-Claudius had not sat idle. He had now decided to admit the truth about Overdramblus, only to have two more attempts to talk to Golpalott rebuffed. Finally, he went to Overdramblus, and asked him to go to the potioneer and tell him exactly what had happened with Cian himself.

Overdramblus still was not happy with the wandmaker, and he almost certainly had an even lower opinion of him after that day, with him even afterwards quoted as viewing him as "the worst of grasping merchants." But he retained a strong fondness for all four of the Weyard sisters, as well as a great respect for Cian, and he admitted right away he disliked hearing her name slandered in such a manner. So a few days later, for their sake, he went to talk to Golpalott.

Nor had Nian been willing to give up the man she wanted without a fight. While her guardian had been trying to talk to him in person, she had written letters, lengthy ones, sometimes taking hours over them. She might not have continued had she known he threw out the first two unread, but when he received a third lengthy missive, delivered by what he described as "a likely overtired owl," he finally gave in and read it.

From both their accounts, it was mostly pleas, intermixed with the occasional ramblings about potions she thought he might be interested in reading. After reading it, Golpalott wrote "I can't doubt thatte she likes me very much, both from how much she wrotte and how close she has paid heed to alle I did saye to her, both about my own selfe, and about my work and my field of study." Still he was not entirely satisfied of her innocence. Also, he too was about to leave London for a few months, traveling to meet with a Welsh potioneer he was planning to exchange recipes and brew more experimental potions with. From his writings, it seems he decided not to think further on the matter until his return.

Many years later, Nian would express a wish that she had thought more about the fact that he hadn't sent her at least a brief note. "I woulde have rested far easier thatte month," she said, and she certainly would have. Instead she spent it writing letters that grew desperate, and then angry, and her letters from late in the intervening time period would include a few things that would actually give Golpalott further pause about forgiving her; he described some of her more angry words as far beyond anything he was used to hearing from anyone. Nian would also later wish she'd paid more attention to the obvious signs of his self-importance.

One wonders what would have happened had he at that time learned that her sister had instigated a conspiracy to steal his customers. But while he did note a slight drop in business that month, he apparently didn't think much of it. It wasn't enough to seriously inconvenience him financially, and he would never be all that interested in wealth.

While Dian and Sigrid's campaign to cause Golpalott trouble was not a success in its goals of truly hurting him or getting his attention, his rival's business did enjoy a substantial boost, and her profile rose in London's society. She began forming her own social circle, which of course included Dian, as well as the Potters. Gaius-Claudius also became something of a member of it, especially since he thought any potential husbands he picked out of it would likely be ones Dian would be willing to have.

Dian's sisters, too, also befriended her new friends. Fian and Gecundus grew very close to the Potters, especially since, of course, they would name their eldest two children after them. Gecundus would also set about trying to improve their situation, and they believed it was due to his influence that they shortly afterwards offered the place on the caravan traveling to Wales, where of course they would first develop the set of charms that would become their first claim to fame.

Also in Sigrid's circle was a distant cousin of hers named Brom Constantinis. Although only two years older than Dian, he was already know as an accomplished duelist, and if he had not had the kind of adventures Gumboil had been able to boast to her about, he was still very well-traveled. He seems not to have impressed her much at their initial meeting, and while her opinion of him was generally good, other older, more experienced duelists she was introduced to interested her more, at first.

It was instead Gauis-Claudius who singled him out as a good candidate for her husband. His reasons mostly involved who else he was related to. On his father's side he had two uncles, Rowan and Wiliam Constantinis, who were looking likely to make the Council sooner or later, and his great-grandmother, Margat of Harlowe, was a very famous witch, known for having traveled as far as China. Within days of meeting him, he was already plotting out how to maneuver them into marriage. He knew, of course, that Dian could not know of his hand in it. But Sigrid too had thought of the match, especially since while Brom had not quite caught Dian's eye, she had caught his. He easily persuaded her to work with him to bring it about.

Though Gauis-Claudius does not describe exactly how they managed it, he claims it was due to their machinations that the two youths found themselves spending time together regularly, running errands from their elders or even find each other's company during their free time. It did not take very long for Brom to fall fully in love, at which point he began to openly woo. Dian admits to being thoroughly charmed, and quite ready to be won. Gaius-Claudius must have felt triumphant indeed on the day she burst into his study and announce whom she wished to marry, and he genuinely surprised her when he said he approved of the match. So much so that she made no protest when he then suggested he do proper negotiations with both Brom and his parents.

Later, she would say that perhaps she ought to have suspected then she had not found her husband as independently as she'd believed. Although even then she did suspect Sigrid's hand in events, but her interference she didn't mind. She would, two years later, finally learn the truth, which would leave her quite irked at her former benefactor, but, she wrote, "however he became so, Brom is now mine own heart's love, and I shalle not give him up, merely for what Master Ollivander has donne; for I thinke my husbande hadde no knowledge of that." The evidence does indeed suggest Brom didn't know. It is unlikely either of their elders would have trusted him not to tell her.

Having finally brought about an advantageous match, Gaius-Claudius certainly not willing to risk losing it by giving Dian much time to find the truth out before the wedding. It had to be alarming enough when, a week after the engagement became official, Dian stormed into the house and declared all was over between the two of them, though it was only three hours later that an owl from Brom changed her mind back. Much later, everyone would become used to such behavior between the volatile couple, but at the time, both Gaius-Claudius and Brom's own family were keen to get things done as soon as possible. Within three months of negotiations starting, the young couple had received a settlement consisting largely of his grandmother's money, and they were married almost right after, on May 17, 1043. Initially they too settled in London, though they ultimately would not stay there very long.

By Dian's wedding, Golpalott had returned to town, and then he finally wrote to Nian, saying he would like an interview with both her and her benefactor. Arranging things with the latter took another month or so, during which the Weyards found one reason for joy: Cian was expecting the first of the five children she would ultimately give birth to. Nian expressed a worry for if they would like to have the stresses of children so soon, but generally the young couple and their families were pleased by this new development.

The grandparents-to-be, especially, began talking of trying to stay in London indefinitely. Arthur and Sinead had by now been there so long they had gotten used to the easier life they were able to live there. They were also old enough to start to lose their hardiness. Nian had even expressed a concern for her mother's health if she returned to their homestead. They and their daughters, having now become a reunited family, very much did not want to separate the way they had in the past either.

When Golpalott returned to the Ollivander household, it was considerably emptier than it had been when he'd last visited it. Still, he apparently decided to talk to everyone else in the household before talking to either his would-be bride or her guardian, including her parents. Gauis-Claudius was left to worry what his younger children would say about him. He need not have; Golpalott records them as having said nothing but good of their father. Sinead Weyard apparently rambled at length in response to only a couple of questions from him, and left him uncertain what to make of her words.

From Arthur Weyard, however, he got a clear, thoughtful appraisal of Gaius-Claudius Ollivander, as well as something of the story of what had happened between Dian and Gumboil, which seems to have finally cleared Nian of wrongdoing in Golpalott's mind. It might have even improved his opinion of the wandmaker enough to make him mind the subsequent negotiations with him less.

Finally, he asked to see Nian, and she was summoned downstairs to see him. She apparently had only become aware of his being there an hour previously, which was nonetheless time enough for her to write out and tear up several speeches to him. Her mother would comment to her the following day that she had never in her life seen the eldest of her daughters look uncertain or frightened, until she saw her descend the stairs.

She need have neither worried, nor gone to such lengths to prepare her words. Barely had she began her entreaties before Golpalott assured her they were no longer necessary, and things were quickly settled between them.

Between him and her guardian, however, matters took longer. During the subsequent months, Golpalott even seriously considered breaking negotiations off and marrying Nian without any aid or goodwill from her guardian. He might have even asked her to do it if not for Fian's being married into the man's family; he knew well that nothing was more important to the sisters than each other, and did not want to risk Gauis-Claudius pressuring her not to see them.

In the end, however, he finally got the wandmaker to be generous by offering to take not one, but all three of the final Weyards left in his house off of his hands. Everyone by then had become aware Arthur and Sinead did not want to go home. But Gaius-Claudius did not want to keep a pair of adults in his house for much longer, and Golpalott was quick to guess that.

He quickly hinted that a large settlement on Nian could be used to support her parents as well. Gauis-Claudius made an offer he afterwards declared as big as he'd hoped for, and the two men also made arrangements that would help them both acquire many of the ingredients of their respective trades in the years to come. They also talked about sharing and even collaborating on research, but their plans to do so would never come to fruition.

Nian Weyard was married to Golpalott on January 5, 1044. Dian wrote not long after it, "Nonne coulde look more triumphante on the day they wedde than she." She had reason to be, perhaps. Of the four sisters, she was the one who had truly fought for her choice of husband, and had suffered a true extended ordeal of not knowing if she would ever have him. Which makes it ironic that while her sisters' marriages would all have their ups and downs, Dian's especially, hers would be the one that was ultimately unhappy.


End file.
